South Shore housing agency investigated over rental assistance

The state has halted the release of new rental assistance vouchers at a regional housing agency because of allegations that employees gave them to friends and family ahead of others on a waiting list, a spokesman for the Department of Housing and Community Development said.

The state has halted the release of new rental assistance vouchers at a regional housing agency because of allegations that employees gave them to friends and family ahead of others on a waiting list, a spokesman for the Department of Housing and Community Development said.

South Shore Housing Development Corp. provides rental assistance in 62 communities south of Boston including Weymouth, Brockton, Hingham, Marshfield and Rockland.

The department last week barred South Shore Housing from granting new vouchers after receiving information that employees were giving them out in violation of department regulations, which require agencies to widely advertise availability of vouchers and keep a waiting list of eligible applicants, spokesman Matthew Sheaff said Tuesday.

“These allegations are serious,” Sheaff said. “We have a team that will be looking into the entire organization.”

Sheaff said members of the investigation team were at South Shore Housing’s Summer Street office in Kingston on Tuesday.

Carl Nagy-Koechlin, South Shore Housing’s executive director, said an employee raised concerns about five vouchers last week, prompting an internal investigation that concluded the people who received them were eligible based on their income, but proper procedures weren’t followed.

He said three employees have been placed on paid administrative leave pending the investigation and a fourth, who was in charge of overseeing the voucher program, resigned.

He noted that the agency administers about 4,000 rental vouchers and said he believes the problems were limited to the five.

“It’s unacceptable that any of these would be allocated improperly and in any way that’s unfair and it looks like that’s what happened,” he said. “We take full responsibility for the oversight and we’re cooperating fully with (the department).”

Nagy-Koechlin said the agency had no waiting list because new vouchers haven’t been available for several years.

But Sheaff said the agency should have used the waiting list from another voucher program or advertised the availability of new vouchers.

Housing vouchers are paid for through a variety of state and federal programs and are intended to help qualified low-income tenants cover their rent.

People now receiving vouchers from the agency will continue to get benefits, but the organization can issue no new ones until the investigation is complete, Sheaff said.